Menu plan : 31 May - 6 June 2011

Here we are again with the meal plan for this coming week and already we're two days into it.  Mind you, we did take one day out to drive around the New Forest and see this year's crop of foals, which was a lovely sunny day which everyone enjoyed.  We took a picnic and stopped at Bolderwood where they've got a well organised picnic area with loos and even an ice cream stand.

This week's menu is following on with the lighter, less calorific, fresher meals - well, as much as is possible!

One deviation from this is Saturday's curry, which is taken from the Gurkha part of the British Army Cookbook - a copy of which (just the Gurkha part, not all of it!) was given to me by the generous Willie who I am sure you will have noticed in the comments sections of my blogs.  Goodness only knows where he got it from - and we won't ask.  ~taps the side of her nose knowingly~  LOL

So, this is how the week's menu has shaped up :

Tuesday : Chicken Jhalfrezi, basmati rice and Peshwari naan

Wednesday : Turkey meatballs in tomato & fennel sauce, with wholemeal pasta & doughballs

Thursday : Chilli Prawn Noodles

Friday : Paprika chicken with Jacket Potatoes

Saturday : Fried Pork Curry with sauce & mushroom rice

Sunday : Pork Shoulder, roast potatoes, carrots, corn on the cob, spring greens & apple sauce

Monday : Chilli con carne & rice.

As I am writing this on the Wednesday evening, we have already sampled the Chicken Jhalfrezi, which was spectacularly successful.  I was a little bit dubious about it, as it was a "healthier" recipe which didn't sound like any curry I'd ever produced.  Not that that's a bad thing - it's always good to learn new techniques.  I was just a little concerned that it would be a bit left-field for the menfolk.

The curry itself was made with chicken marinated in yoghurt, tomato puree, chilli and lemon juice.  You cook the onion and green pepper and add the marinated chicken, cooking the whole thing until fairly dry.  Then - and this was the left field bit - you serve the curry on a bed of salad leaves (I chose watercress, although spinach would be good too) that have been dressed in lemon juice & sea salt.

It was, as they say, blindin'.

This evening's fare was a dish of home-made meatballs in a tomato & fennel sauce.  The meatballs were made with turkey mince which is as economical as it is gentle in flavour.  However, with a clove of garlic, some breadcrumbs and lemon zest - not to mention a good hit of sea salt & freshly ground black pepper - a fairly uninteresting pack of mince turned into some cracking good meatballs.  The sauce was great - the fennel seeds gave it an interesting fragrance and a hint of aniseed on your tongue.  I'll be blogging this one once I've done the Jhalfrezi!

Thursday is hubby's night to cook and he's trotting out his famous Chilli Prawn Noodles.  I can't wait, as I really enjoy this dish - and we've a few interesting ingredients in the cupboard now that we didn't have previously.  Hubby may opt to stay with the approved recipe - but with things like Mirrin and Fish Sauce just sitting there, they'd be hard to resist.

Friday brings the second attempt at the Paprika chicken that got bumped from last week's menu.  Fingers crossed, it makes it this week.

Saturday is Ghurka curry night and, because I couldn't rustle up 10 or 50 friends to come and share, I'll be having an interesting time scaling the British Army's recipes down to suit 3 of us!

I'm really looking forward to Sunday's roast.  I haven't done a roast for a few weeks now and have been yearning for a piece of pork.  I figure a slow-roasted piece of shoulder will fit the bill perfectly.  I've managed to accumulate enough dripping in my fat cup for roast potatoes, and we'll be having Chantenay carrots, corn on the cob and spring greens.  I'll try to avoid doing Yorkshire puddings, in the interests of keeping the whole thing on the lighter side of "thumping great roast dinner".

Which brings us back to Monday, when we'll be trotting out another old favourite - Chilli con Carne.  Well, it is possible to make it without incurring the wrath of the calorie police, plus Son & heir really enjoys a good chilli.  It won't be the mega-chilli of late, which involves beef shin, but a more demure version using minced beef.  I've got a few aces up my sleeve that were used in the mega-chilli, so it'll be interesting to see how they translate in the more demure version!

So there we are.  It would seem as though meat-free Monday has taken a bit of a back seat again, which is very naughty of me.  I'll have to do better for next week!

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Prawn & Peanut Noodle Stir Fry

Calming my quavering nerves, I sallied forth last night to make the above noodle dish.  Now I'd been craving noodles for days and had managed to soothe the craving somewhat by purchasing a pack of Mi Goreng noodles (complete with flavouring and seasoning) from the local Supermarket.  Add a one-egg omelette and you've got lunch in under 5 minutes.  Brilliant.

However, I was still keen for a whopping great pile of steaming, fragrant noodles to cross my path.  Son had had a large lunch at school and had opted not to join in the noodle bonanza, so it was just myself and hubby.  Re-reading the recipe again, it just seemed too easy to be THAT nice, but I put my trust in the BBC's Good Food recipes and got cracking.

You can find the original recipe at www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/6175 however, you'll see that my version of it changed a bit, owing to the fact that mange tout were in excess of £1 in the supermarket, whereas they did a fresh stir-fry mix which contained mange tout along with butternut squash and beanshoots (amongst a whole host of other veg) for £1.  I also had a yellow pepper going bukshee in the fridge, so that got pressganged into use.

A word of warning - when I mixed the "dressing" together, it behaved somewhat unexpectedly in that it whisked together well but then suddenly set to a very stiff consistency.  I couldn't help but think that it was supposed to be looser than that, but I noticed that the frozen prawns - which I'd just put into the pan with the veggies - had released a lot of water and everything was in danger of going very soupy.  So, I added the "dressing", which combined beautifully with the liquid that was already in the pan and the situation was saved.  *phew*  This turned out to be a delicious combination, which I'd be very happy to serve again - and I'd simply add more noodles, vegetables and perhaps an omelette, to feed 3.

PEANUT & PRAWN NOODLE STIR-FRY (serves 2)

Ingredients

1 tbsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp peanut butter
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp chilli sauce
100g egg noodles
200g cooked peeled prawns, defrosted and drained if frozen
A stir-fry pack of vegetables of your choice
2 spring onions, shredded, if not in the vegetable pack
a quarter of a bell pepper, sliced finely, if not in the vegetable pack.

Method :

1.  Put a pot of salted water on to boil.
2.  Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan and add all the vegetables, leaving them to colour slightly, then turning.
3.  When the water boils, add the noodles and cook as pack instructions.
4.  When the vegetables are almost cooked, add the prawns and heat through.
5.  Whisk together the peanut butter, sesame oil, soy sauce and chilli sauce with 2 tbsp boiling water, season with salt and add to the vegetables & prawns.  Mix through.
6.  Add the noodles and stir to combine.
7.  Serve.

Ottolenghi to the rescue! Kosheri & spicy minced beef.



Kosheri on the right, Spicy minced beef on the left

We are currently going through a period of extreme financial embarrassment (least said, soonest mended) and have been making meals out of very little.  For instance, this last week, our total groceries bill came to just short of £45 - which I think is something of a record.
On the menu list for the Saturday, was entered "Rice & stuff".  Now this is the name of a moveable recipe which, in our house, can mean absolutely anything - it's one stipulation is that it has to involve rice.  I had been pondering over this "Rice & stuff" as to what kind of "stuff" I could utilise.  I knew we had a pack of minced beef in the freezer for use in this dish, but what form it would take thereafter was in the lap of the gods.

A few days into this pondering, I suddenly remembered a recipe I'd seen in the Ottolenghi book "The Cookbook", which I had borrowed from the Library.  To the best of my recollection, it involved rice (tick), lentils (tick), vermicelli noodles (hmmn, no vermicelli in the cupboard, but I did have egg noodles) and spices, all of which I had in stock.  So I looked it up.  "Kosheri" is, apparently, an Arabian street vendor dish.  Well, that suited the lack of vermicelli, as I reckoned that if street vendors made it they probably didn't go off down to their local deli for noodles.  Kosheri is traditionally served with a spicy tomato sauce, which got me to thinking regarding the minced beef.  If I could make a spicy tomato-based minced beef, that might go quite nicely.

Well, it did.  I have blogged the minced beef recipe here.

A couple of notes on the recipe itself - firstly regarding the lentils.  I used dried lentils and put them on to cook as it said in the recipe, to boil for 25 mins.  Then it occurred to me to check the cooking time on the bag.  Which said "soak for min. 12 hrs".  Yikes!  Well, I couldn't do anything about that now, so continued with the cooking.  I tested them at around 15 minutes and they were becoming softened, so put my trust in Ottolenghi's recipe and continued.  Suffice to say, they didn't need the 12hrs soaking.  For sure, if they had have been soaked, they'd have needed far less cooking - so that's something to bear in mind for the future.

Secondly, where the chicken stock was concerned, I used a chicken stock cube.  However, having watched Masterchef far too many times and consequently having had the words "get lots of flavour into your food" drummed in, I had an idea which turned out to be a blinder.  I keep a dripping cup in the fridge.  Whenever I roast a joint, I tip the fat into the dripping cup and use it for my roast potatoes, next time.  Inevitably, I also get a layer of jelly in the dripping cup.  Now I know that this jelly is like concentrated chicken (as that's the meat we predominantly roast) stock.  So I included a tablespoonful of it in the stock - which upped the chickeny flavour by a measure of many.  Well worth doing, I'd say!

NOTE : Here's a picture of our second go at Kosheri, this time accompanied by some spicy lamb mince.  Just as good!

KOSHERI (feeds 4)

Ingredients :

150g green lentils, unsoaked
200g basmati rice
40g unsalted butter
50g vermicelli noodles (I used egg noodles)
400ml chicken stock
half tsp grated nutmeg
one and a half tsp ground cinnamon
one tsp salt
half a tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp olive oil
2 onions, halved and thinly sliced.

Method :

1.  Place the lentils in a large sieve and wash them under cold running water.  Transfer to a large saucepan, cover with plenty of cold salted water and bring to the boil.  Reduce the heat and simmer for 25 minutes.  The lentils should be tender but not mushy.  Drain in a colander and leave to one side to keep warm.

2.  Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the onions and sauté over medium heat for around 20 minutes until dark brown.  Transfer to kitchen paper to drain and keep warm.

3.  Rinse the rice and drain well.  Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat.  Add the raw vermicelli or noodles, stir and continue frying and stirring until they turn golden brown.  Add the drained rice and mix well until it is coated in the butter.  Now add the stock (with or without the chicken jelly included), nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper.

4.  Stirring all the time to prevent the rice sticking, bring to the boil, cover and reduce the heat to a minimum and simmer for 12 mins.  Turn off the heat, remove the lid, cover the pan with a clean tea towel and put the lid back on.  Leave like that for around 5 minutes, which helps to make the rice light and fluffy.

5.  To serve, lightly break up the rice with a fork and add the lentils & most of the onions, taste for seasoning and adjust accordingly.  Top the rice with the remaining onions.

Chilli Prawn Noodles

This is another of hubby's concoctions and one which I absolutely love and would be very happy to eat twice a week!

It is very useful for Monday evening's dinner, when we're due to shop the next day and consequently there isn't much in the way of vegetables or fresh food in the fridge.  With this one, there's no need to try and keep salad fresh, or stop carrots from going floppy!

One word of warning, though - dependant upon the chillies, it can turn out blisteringly hot.  Mind you, that's part of the fun of the dish!

CHILLI PRAWN NOODLES  (Serves 4)

Ingredients

250g pack of egg noodles
300g pack of prawns
3 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp groundnut or sunflower oil
3 tbsp runny honey
1.5 tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 shallots, finely chopped
2 red chillies, finely chopped
100g frozen peas, defrosted
2 tsp chinese five spice
coriander leaves as garnish.

Method

1.  Place the dried noodles into a large bowl and completely cover them with freshly boiled water, leaving to stand until soft or al dente.

2.  Meanwhile, in a wok or deep frying pan, heat the oil and gently saute the finely chopped shallots and chillies until soft, do not let them brown.  Once soft, add the five spice and the peas and set aside.

3.  Once the noodles are soft, drain them thoroughly and stir through the soy sauce, honey & sesame oil.  Add the noodles to the wok and stir through over a high heat before adding the prawns, which must be defrosted and drained.  Fry until the prawns are warmed through and serve immediately with a sprinkling of coriander leaves for garnish.

Don't forget your handkerchief, because your nose is bound to run!